Western Digital Breaks a Record: WD2000JB with 200 GB — THG.RU

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The article first appeared in Tom’s Hard News Email Newsletter

Introduction

After a few weeks of delays, it is finally available: the WD2000JB from Western Digital, a high performance drive and impressive storage monster. It offers a whopping 200 GB, although, on the surface, it looks exactly like its preceding models, with no trace of sex appeal or emotion.

The improvements are to be found under its aluminum and cast iron casing: Western Digital has managed to give each platter 60 GB. Hard drives with 120 GB and 180 GB (with two and three platters, respectively) were to be expected, but the top model with 200 GB serves to show that more than 60 GB per platter should be possible — because this hard drive uses only three platters.

Those who are interested in the new 120 GB model should be on the alert, because this drive is available at the store in two versions: one with the previous inner mechanisms and three 40 GB platters, and another one that is technically the same as the WD2000 tested here, but with two 60 GB platters. The new model has higher performance capabilities, so if the prices are the same, then go for the newer model. The model number of the new drive doesn’t allow you to identify which is which, so we recommend that you take a look at the total number of sectors (indicated on the drive as «Drive Parameters»): the «old» model has 234.375 billion; the latest model has 234.442 billion. An alternative is to look at the manufacturing date — models dated starting September 2002 are most likely the ones that have 60 GB per platter.

We would like to take a moment and a talk about the situation with hard drive warranties. The current trend in general, has beenfor hard drive manufacturers to reduce their warranty to one year on ATA hard drive products. Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital have all made moves to adapt this new warranty policy after October 1st 2002. From our understanding this policy does not currently apply to end users in within the European Union. As for end users in the US and Canada, Western Digital has made no changes to the warranty policy on the «JB» Special Edition hard drives. Since the WD2000JB in this review is a member of the «JB» Special Edition series of drives its warranty continues to stand at three years, at least for the moment. We will have some additional coverage on the hard drive warranty issues in an upcoming article.

A New Record: 200 GB

In the last few years, Western Digital has fortified its position as a leader in hard drive manufacturing. The company was the first to ship 100 and 120 GB drives that already ran at a fast 7200 rpm, as opposed to the drives from its competitors. And its latest products break the current records once more: although Samsung has already come out with 60 GB per platter (read our review here), WD’s 200 GB total storage capacity remains unbeaten.

The Competition Is Not Idle

IBM

IBM’s latest press release brings hope for a new generation of Deskstar 180GXP drives, soon to be launched. Its maximum capacity can be read in its product name — therefore, Western Digital won’t have to cede the capacity record to IBM. With the IBM drive, progress is to be found in performance, because IBM places great importance on implementing Tagged Command Queuing: this makes it possible for the drive to rearrange individual commands in order to optimize the sequence of write and seek processes. Furthermore, all drives of the 180GXP family will feature fluid dynamic bearing, which significantly reduces the noise of a drive when in operation.

Maxtor

Maxtor seems to strive for making even larger steps: the DiamondMax family will be extended with two new drive series, each with two types of drives, as well as 80 GB per platter and capacities of up to 160 GB and 320 GB, respectively. The DiamondMax Plus 9 runs at 7200 rpm, and the DiamondMax 16 makes do with 5400 rpm.

By contrast, MaXLine II is supposed to offer capacities of up to 320 GB, but only at 5400 rpm. Drives with 7200 rpm are supposed to provide a maximum of 250 GB. The MaXLine family is primarily targeted at demanding users who place high importance on considerably reduced probability for drive failure (MTBF up to 1 million hours). This would then allow IDE drives to be used in the mid-range server sector.

* designed for continuous operation

In addition, all new models should also be available with a Serial-ATA interface.

Seagate

The Barracuda ATA V is raring to go. Up to 120 GB will be offered — is this supposed to stand up to the immense capacities offered by Maxtor and Western Digital?? In the area of SCSI, at least with the Barracuda 180, the lead is in good hands — and this has been the case for more than one year!

Technically, Seagate is still at the very front, because the Barracuda ATA V runs at 7200 rpm and has 60 GB per platter. Moreover, the drive will be available in a Serial-ATA version right from the beginning.

Decisions, Decisions: Interfaces

UltraATA (left) vs. Serial ATA. The new cable is virtually immune to kinking, is reasonably priced and works despite the heat that builds up in the PC. Reverse polarity is impossible.

Basically, it’s all called IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics), but each manufacturer has a different interpretation of it. Serial ATA is still far from achieving a real breakthrough, even though many motherboard manufacturers are integrating Serial-ATA controllers. Another popular feature are Serial-ATA bridges, for using conventional ATA controllers with Serial-ATA drives. However, the trend veers from the latter method, even though this makes it much easier to switch over to the interface of the future.

Western Digital has not announced a [Serial-ATA] drive, and the Serial-ATA models from Seagate and Maxtor have yet to become available, so the motherboard manufacturers could, in fact, reduce the integration of Serial-ATA components — currently, hardly anyone can make use of the corresponding controller. It’s a similar situation with FireWire controllers — positive reponse is too low, and the costs are too high.

With the help of Serial-ATA bridges (chip pictured above), Serial ATA drives can be run using conventional IDE and ATA controllers. Small adapters are also possible with these bridges.

Maxtor, the champion of UltraATA/133, will be equipping all new drives with this feature. By contrast, IBM, Seagate and Western Digital will be equipping their ATA drives in the next few years with only UltraATA/100 until they’ve completed the switch over to Serial ATA. However, in practice, even this latest generation won’t be able to reach the bandwidth limit of approximately 85 MB/s. Conclusion: UltraATA/100 is sufficient!

A further argument for UltraATA/100 is the PCI bus, which, according to the current specification, can only transport 133 MB/s at 33 MHz anyway. And don’t forget that this bandwidth has to be shared by all PCI devices (e.g., sound system, network controller, USB controller, etc.). In this context, it doesn’t make sense to use Serial ATA from a performance point of view — as a matter of fact, PCI would put the brakes on the theoretically possible 150 MB/s. The only thing that one could hope for is that Serial ATA will quickly be introduced to chipsets and that PCIX will arrive soon.

Technical Data

Accessories

For our test, we received the retail version in a stylish blue box. Inside, apart from the drive itself, there was also a short manual, a set of screws for installation, a suitable ribbon cable and a diskette with the Data Lifeguard tools.

Test Configuration

Benchmark Results

Data Transfer Diagram

Data Transfer

Temperature

Application

CPU Utilization

IO-Meter

Access Time

Compared to earlier models such as the WD1200, the WD2000 doesn’t do as well in the test for access time.

Conclusion: Exclusive Drive at an Exclusive Price

At this moment, Western Digital has done nearly everything right: the new models store much more data than the earlier generations of drives, are faster, run slightly cooler and are a tad less noisy (the latter of which is merely a subjective observation in this review). What doesn’t fit into the picture is the access time, which is not very satisfactory. And then there’s the price…

Our attempt to attain the capacity of the WD2000JB by using several smaller hard drives put this newest hard drive in a rather unfavorable light, because ultimately, you have to shell out $399 for the WD2000. For the same price, you can also get two 120 GB drives of the same type from Western Digital (also with 8 MB cache). And, for just slightly more money, you can even get three 100 GB to 120 GB drives from other manufacturers!

Therefore, capacity alone does not make a good argument for buying the drive, because our price/ capacity comparison above would give you 360 GB under ideal conditions. Even the performance of the new drive, which has been significantly increased, should easily be surpassable by using two other drives (not to mention three), thanks to IDE RAID.

Nevertheless, aside from the high price, no other weaknesses appear with the WD2000JB. Whoever buys the WD2000 will get the currently most exclusive hard drive. For $20-$30 less, a variant with only 2 MB is also available. Considering the price, however, you wouldn’t want to do without this performance-boosting feature.